Lacybourne Manor (54 page)

Sibyl stopped, waiting for him
to walk to the house with her.

“Go in, sweetheart, I need to
make a call,” he directed her gently. “Tell Mum I’ll be in in a few
minutes.”

She looked at him closely
then turned and, with no small amount of absorption, he watched her
generous hips sway as she walked to the house.

Then he called Robert
Fitzwilliam.

“
Look into Tamara
Adams.
She’s been following us the entire
day, all the way to Heathrow and back,” Colin ordered.

“
Got it. You still need
Rick tomorrow?” Robert asked about the bodyguard Colin had engaged
to watch Sibyl and now her mother and, much more recently,
his
mother.

“Yes,” Colin answered.

“Fine, he’ll be at your house
at seven.”

Colin flipped his mobile shut,
not looking forward to the upcoming conversation with Sibyl about
her future bodyguard.

With resignation, Colin went in
to greet his mother.

* * * * *

Sibyl sat next to Colin in Mrs.
Byrne’s magic room.

Across from them, Mrs. Byrne,
who was still not her usual, vital self, was moving around
carefully as if her body was a fragile thing. Still, she was
muttering chants as she clinked and clacked amongst a plethora of
vials, shakers, mortars and pestles, and other extraordinary
flotsam and jetsam of witch paraphernalia she kept in her magic
room. A room, done up in plums and roses, tassels and velvets,
shelves and spindly tables carrying strange and fascinating
objects, it looked like a set right out of a movie.

Phoebe, who had come into the
story late and was still processing it, sat silently across the
room, staring stupefied at Marian’s activity.

Angie, Mrs. Byrne’s daughter,
was assisting her mother as if they did this kind of thing every
day.

Mags was sitting next to Phoebe
barely able to hold herself still, alight with glee.

Sibyl slid a cautious glance
toward Colin who was not happy at all. He was obviously dubious and
it was just as obvious he wished to be somewhere else. He was
sitting with one ankle casually resting on his other knee, slouched
arrogantly and one of his arms was lying across the back of Sibyl’s
chair.

Regardless of his nonchalant
position, he seemed wired, ready to pounce.

Since returning from Heathrow,
Sibyl noticed that something had changed in him. He seemed
impatient and energetic, like a big cat prowling back and forth in
front of its cage in a zoo, desperate to get out.

Sibyl thought, looking at him,
that perhaps it hadn’t been wise to push this magical protection
spell thing that afternoon. He hadn’t wanted to come and now that
he was there, it was blindingly obvious he very much didn’t want to
be.

However, Sibyl had a plan. In
fact, she had two plans and she needed to talk to Marian about them
because she needed the older woman’s help.

She’d been thinking about it in
an effort not to think about her confession of love last night and
the fact that it was not returned.

Sibyl believed this was all
more than lucky coincidence. That it all fit together. That there
was magic and mayhem in the air and Sibyl had to find a way to stop
it.

As crazy as it all seemed,
Sibyl believed Mrs. Byrne.

Colin could hire dozens of
private investigators if he wanted to but Sibyl was going to
investigate the magical side.

“Now!” Mrs. Byrne announced
happily, turning toward Sibyl and Colin and taking Sibyl from her
thoughts. Phoebe jumped nervously as Mags leaned forward in
excitement. “I started this weeks ago, so it’s been fermenting
nicely,” Mrs. Byrne explained. “I’ve added a few of my own,
personal touches and left it to marinade this morning. It should do
the trick.”

She sounded like she was
talking about a recipe for chicken.

“She’s very good,” Angie stated
proudly, her eyes on her mother.

Mrs. Byrne moved forward with a
glass vial in one hand that had a powder in it that looked like
cinnamon, a common kitchen strainer in the other.

Marian moved directly toward
Colin.

“This won’t hurt a bit,” she
assured and lifted the vial and strainer over his head.

“
What,” his voice was low
and even and very, very frightening but not nearly as frightening
as the hard, cold look on his face, a look and tone that froze
Marian’s hands in mid air, “do you think you’re going to do
with
that?
”

“Why, pour it over your head,”
Marian explained as if it was the most normal thing in the
world.

He lithely slid out of his
chair, out from under the strainer and towered over her. “I think
not.”

Marian’s face set resolutely.
“My dear man –”

“Do me!” Sibyl interjected,
finding herself in the role of peacemaker. If she didn’t step in,
by the look on his face, Colin was likely to explode. “You can do
me first, I don’t mind.”

Marian turned to Sibyl. “The
most potent effects of the charm come in the first few sprinkles,”
Marian explained, “and Colin –”

“
By all means, shower
away on Sibyl,
especially
if they are the most
potent,” Colin cut in. He’d crossed his arms on his chest and now,
instead of looking furious, he looked amused.

Sibyl made a face at him which
caused him, to her great distress, to let out a sharp bark of
laughter.

Marian sagely ignored him and
muttered to Sibyl, “This won’t take even a minute, dear.”

And then she lifted the
strainer over Sibyl’s head and poured the cinnamon concoction in
and Sibyl waited to be dusted with its rusty, brown contents.

Instead, to her utter
amazement, the minute the brown powder sifted through the strainer,
it sparkled and glittered brightly, raining down on her like fairy
dust, disappearing altogether the minute it touched her hair, her
skin, her clothes.

“
Oh… my…
goddess
,”
Mags breathed.

Phoebe’s mouth gaped open and
stayed that way.

Colin’s eyes narrowed.

“That’ll do.” Marian swiftly
pulled the strainer and vial way.

“You see!” Sibyl, feeling hope
for the first time, a witness to obvious magic (with pixie dust and
all!), she shot out of her chair with excitement. “Oh Colin, this
might possibly work!”

“Of course it’ll work,” Angie
grumbled.

Colin did not appear, in any
way, shape or form, to be convinced.

“I fail to see –” he began but
she ran to him, flattening her palms against his abdomen, she
leaned into him.

“Please do it, for me?” she
begged, looking beseechingly into his doubting eyes.

He stared at her a moment and
then, to her delight, gave in, though not at all gracefully.

And he did this by muttering,
“For Christ’s sake,” before he sat down to get his sprinkling.

When all was done, Colin
announced, “I need to make a few calls, I’ll be out front.” And he
marched out of the magic room, the very picture of affronted male
dignity and, if possible, Sibyl’s love for him deepened.

Oblivious to all of this, Angie
chimed in happily, “Time for a cuppa,” and she herded a still
stunned Phoebe and an excitedly chattering Mags into the
kitchen.

Sibyl hung back with Mrs. Byrne
who was cleaning her magical implements.

“Mrs. Byrne. You’ve done so
much and at great personal cost –” Sibyl charged right in to begin
work on her plan, time was of the essence.

“
No cost at all, dear,
it’s my pleasure, it’s my
destiny
.” Although still not
fully back to herself, Mrs. Byrne was obviously in her element,
enjoying every second of this.

Sibyl approached her and
watched her working. “I need to ask you a favour.”

Marian threw her a smile and
immediately replied, “Anything.”

Sibyl smiled back at her.

Then she asked, “If you can
bring Royce forward, could you send me back?”

Marian’s hands stopped what
they were doing and she turned to Sibyl with questioning eyes. “Of
course, dear, it’s very basic magic, though a costly endeavour in
time and energy but why would you want to do that?”

Sibyl quickly explained, “I’ve
been waiting to have another dream memory but I haven’t had one in
ages. I think now, if I went back, maybe he would recall me or I
could get him to listen to me. If I go back, I can tell him what’s
going to happen and he can be prepared for it, fight it, keep
himself and Beatrice alive and…”

She trailed off when Mrs. Byrne
turned back to her task while shaking her head.

“No, no. As much as I’d like
to, you don’t mess with time. Never.” She paused thoughtfully, as
if considering it. Then shook her head again, sadly and finished,
“Ever.”

“But Marian, don’t you see? If
we stop the curse before it starts –”

Marian set down the strainer
which had been cleaned with some clear fluid in an oddly shaped,
cork-topped bottle and she turned to Sibyl. “Sibyl, as lovely as it
would be to allow their love to blossom and grow, if we change time
and Royce and Beatrice lived, then the whole world could change. It
could be good or it could be bad. We don’t know; we’d have no way
of ever knowing. It could be that you or Colin or the both of you
would never exist. Or me. Or my children. Or Japan could fall into
the ocean. Anything could happen.”

“It couldn’t be that bad and if
–”

Marian put her hand out to
touch Sibyl’s cheek.

“No,” she said in a quiet
voice, trying to soften the blow of her refusal.

Sibyl closed her eyes.

So much for Plan A, now she had
to try Plan B.

“Okay, I have another
idea.”

“I’m all ears,” Marian informed
her and then went to sit down in a plush, worn, plum-coloured,
velvet chair with a doily hanging on the back of it. Sibyl took a
seat beside her, took a deep breath, pinned her hopes on her words
and plunged ahead.

“You can give me the potion you
gave Colin and give some to him. But more this time, so that Royce
and Beatrice could come forward for long enough to consummate their
love using our bodies.”

Marian’s eyes widened and she
pulled in a swift breath. Sibyl found this encouraging and she
forged ahead.

“
The time before, it
didn’t last long so it would have to last long enough for them to
have time to, um…
do
it.
They’d know each other immediately, I
know it. Even though the time has changed, the place has changed
and our hair has changed. I know they’d recognise each other. We
could…” She stopped because she making up the entirety of the plan
as she went along then she hit on it. “Write them a note! Tell them
what to do. Then
they
could stop the curse and give Colin and me time,
without this hanging over our heads, to…”

Again, she trailed to a stop
when Mrs. Byrne shook her head.

“
Sibyl, my dear, that is
a very volatile potion.
Anything
could go wrong with
that. I took a grave risk the last time and was very lucky with the
outcome. And, it cannot be taken in large doses under any
circumstances. It could catastrophic.”

“
But why?”
Sibyl cried. She needed either Plan A or Plan B
because Plan C was unthinkable.

Plan C meant that in order to
save Colin, she’d have to leave him. It was all about them being
together, Marian had told them that and she knew it was true in her
heart. The minute she left, he’d be safe again.

“
One of the souls could
get stuck, forever, in the present, leaving either you or Colin in
some horrible limbo for eternity. Obviously, I either hit it right
or Colin has no other incarnations but you could have. What if I
brought forward someone else, some
thing
else? A bee, for example. A
samurai. No, it doesn’t bear contemplating.” Looking at Sibyl’s
dejected expression she leaned forward and patted her hand. “I’m
sorry, my dear. They are clever ideas but you’re just going to have
to tell him you love him.”

She smiled at Sibyl with
knowing eyes and Sibyl’s heart sank.

“I already did,” Sibyl
whispered.

Marian’s face glowed. “Well
done! And?”

“And nothing.” Sibyl answered,
“He doesn’t love me back.”

It was Marian’s turn to
give a hoot of laughter (a hoot that lasted a good while). When she
had her mirth under control she actually wiped her eyes.

Then she said, still
chuckling, “Oh, my dear, that’s too much. Do you think Colin Morgan
would sit and be sprinkled with magic dust for just
anyone?
”

Sibyl bit her lip but
replied, “He cares about me, I know he does. He wants to keep me
safe. He’s very patient with me but if he loved me, he’d tell me.”
Marian smiled kindly but Sibyl shook her head, feeling tears
stinging the backs of her eyes, tears she refused to shed, for now.
“No, Marian, I told him last night and he could have… there’s no
reason why he didn’t tell me so he must not feel it. Maybe one day,
I can hope but we need
time
and someone’s trying to kill
him.”

“They’re trying to kill you
both, you must remember that.” Marian warned softly. “You are in
just as much danger as Colin is.”

“
I had a dream where his
throat is slit,
his
, not mine. And I have these
dreams –”

“
I know, my dear Sibyl.
You’re clairvoyant.” Marian waved that strange fact away as if it
meant nothing. “But we can change what you saw.”